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Look Out for Your Financial Wellbeing

Property and Debt

From a financial standpoint, your marital debt, child support, taxes, alimony, and the way you structure a divorce settlement of community property (with more or less liquidity), will have lasting effects on your income and retirement for many years down the road.

In Detente mediation, you will make a full financial disclosure to each other of what you own and what you owe on an assets and liabilities spreadsheet. The spouses also provide pay stubs, all statements, and list all assets, bank accounts, retirement plans, real estate, valuable personal items, business interests, stocks, pensions, royalties, etc., as well as liabilities and debts. If either of you requests it, you can complete a sworn "Inventory and Appraisement" like you would if you were using divorce lawyers.

Before you sign any final documents, we help you categorize assets and debts as separate property or community property, value them, and divide them fairly and sensibly through negotiation and agreement, with due consideration of tax consequences and getting join debt out of both of your names. We provide a spreadsheet that makes it easy to see at a glance what the net total value of the property is and how the spouses propose to allocate the assets and debts between them.

For your protection, there is a provision in the contract ("treaty") each of you signs in which you agree that if you do not disclose an asset in the divorce mediation and decree process, the asset goes to the other spouse.

We provide resources for long-term financial projections to help you decide whether to cash out or to keep your 401k and IRAs, for example. We can also refer you to a professional to objectively value a business. We will help you make decisions about selling a business, buying out the other's interest, or continuing to run it together after divorce if it is a shared enterprise.

Income and Expenses

Nearly everyone who divorces or separates is faced with the challenge of figuring out how to make the same amount of money cover two households instead of one.

For divorce and separation, Detente mediators provide a simple to follow worksheet for you to state your income and current and post-divorce expenses for yourself and children. When it comes to day-to-day finances, we walk you through decisions about how bills will be paid, and what child support will cover, among other things. Doing this exercise helps you to figure out how much money there is, how to allocate it for important things, and where you can begin to cut other expenses.

With this information, together we evaluate the need for and the ability to pay child support, medical support, and spousal support before and after the divorce.